Fred R. Linton. From
the turbulent scenes of the Kansas City Board of Trade, where with
other men he experienced
the financial reverses and alternately the pleasures of wealth, Mr.
Linton came six years ago and established himself in the then
unassuming but prosperous City of Chickasha. At that time he had not
yet recovered from his previous reverses, and was $10,000 in debt. He
determined to apply to the grain business in Oklahoma the same
industry and tact which he had employed in his business career at
Kansas City. The success he has made in Chickasha is beat attested by
the books of the Linton Grain Company, of which he is proprietor, and
which show that he handled more than $1,000,000 worth of wheat in the
first two months of 1915 and that the business of a day during that
period ran from $23,000 to $94,000. His is principally export
business, and he buys wheat in carload lots from all over Oklahoma
and Kansas. In order to serve the local trade he conducts a $20,000
modern elevator plant in Chickasha.

Fred R. Linton was
born in Washington County, Illinois, in 1866, a son of Benjamin and
Susan A. (Death) Linton. His father, a native of Wilmington, Ohio,
was a general merchant and lumber and grain dealer, and died in 1881.
The grandfather, Nathan Linton, was the first settler in Clinton
County, Ohio, where he surveyed and platted the county and built the
first brick house, and lived to the venerable age of ninety years. A
history has been written of the Linton family in America, showing its
first ancestors to have located in Pennsylvania as Quaker settlers
prior to the Revolutionary war. Reunions of the family are held
annually in Philadelphia.

Mr. Linton received
his primary education in the public schools of Illinois. An endowment
of unusual energy and enterprise sent him into the field of business
when still a boy. At the age of fifteen he was a marker in the Board
of Trade of Kansas City, with an ambition eventually to become a
member of that organization. This ambition was realized at the age of
nineteen, when he was the youngest man to hold a seat in the board.
The year he was twenty-one brought his first important success, when
he netted $40,000 from his operations. The following year this
fortune was lost, and for a few years his career was filled with
successes and adversity, leading up to the disastrous flood of 1903,
when practically all his holdings were washed away. It required
several years to re-establish himself, and some of his obligations
were not paid until after he came to
Oklahoma in 1909. For a year before locating in Chickasha Mr. Linton
was engaged in the banking business at Montrose, Missouri.

In Chickasha he is
well located with reference to the grain belt and railroad
facilities, and his business has grown to enormous proportions. The
knowledge he acquired on the board of trade has been applicable here
and the business probably leads all others of its kind in towns of
this size in the West. Mr. Linton is also one of the thirty
stockholders in the American Coal Refining Company of Denver,
Colorado, which is operated with a capitalization of $300,000. This
company controls new processes by which ingredients are taken from
coal and manufactured into products which have a great demand in
various commercial industries and from which large profits are
realized.

Mr. Linton was
married at Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 1887, to Miss Sue E.
Rathbone, daughter of Col. W. P. Rathbone, a distinguished West
Virginian. Mrs. Linton died after becoming the mother of four
children, all of whom are also deceased. The oldest child, a boy of
twenty-one, died in a field near Chickasha in 1913 while learning the
occupation of farmer. In June, 1909, Mr. Linton married Miss Sadie C.
Tully of Kansas City. W. H. Miller, late secretary of the Kansas City
Board of Trade, married a sister of Mr. Linton, and she is still a
resident of Kansas City.

Mr. Linton is a
member of the Oklahoma Grain Dealers’ Association
and the Grady County Farm Bureau and Chickasha Chamber of Commerce.
He is essentially a home man and has little to do with clubs and
lodges. At Fifteenth Street and Minnesota Avenue in Chickasha he has
built a $14,000 home of Oklahoma granite and stucco. The structure is
one of the finest in the city, and thoroughly modern.